#001da9

A journey through Derek Jarman's filmography.

I’m not sure if it works if you actively go searching for your favorite director. The way they work is they’re supposed to find you, in the endless sea of media and bullshit we call “the content sphere.” That doesn’t mean I haven’t been wont to try.

I think the story of me and Derek Jarman is much like the story of me and any other boy. Jonah meets boy. Jonah gets dazzled by boy. Jonah goes and praises the boy for all he’s worth. Boy does something to make Jonah realize he was never actually all that special. And a dramatic falling out ensues. Repeat ad nauseam. My husband finally broke this spell, so I’ve had to go looking elsewhere to repeat my old patterns. And just like the countless times before, I was enraptured with Derek Jarman. Here was this gay director producing dark fantasy such as myself. The Tempest, set in an abandoned castle on a cold English island, shrouded in night at all hours. What wasn’t to love? Best part: he bastardized the script. Cut out all the boring parts and added his own stuff. He was either fucking awful or a fucking genius. One movie in, and I was hooked, going around to all my friends and asking: “Have you ever heard of a gay British film director named Derek Jarman? He’s my new favorite.”

Derek Jarman died of AIDS complications on February 19, 1994, at the age of 52. This is much too young, and only his films and writings remain. His 1979 adaptation of The Tempest was the first of his works I encountered. The only reason I found this version of the play was because I was looking for an adaptation from a clip off Cunk on Shakespeare—and it turned out to be the wrong Tempest anyway! I was enraptured, probably because of the nude male actor with the nice cock. I don’t remember what led me to look up the director himself. Possibly because I (correctly) read the adaptation as queer. Or perhaps I ended up on his page after tumbling down a Wikipedia rabbit hole. (I look up all the movies I watch.) But there he was, our Derek Jarman. I read about how the first ever feature he shot was a biopic of St. Sebastian. This felt like a revelation to me, like the Universe converged so I could find Jarman’s work. I had been talking only a day before with a friend on how I wanted a poster of St. Sebastian to go on the door of my study—inspired by the photographs of notorious Bad Gay™ Yukio Mishima. The graceful, homoerotic form of the saint tied up, arrows piercing his chest, was too much for the little goth gay inside me. Apparently it had been too much for Jarman as well, and he went to lengths to do something about it.

Sebastiane was filmed on location in the Mediterranean Islands, featuring an all-male cast in exclusively Latin dialogue. Of course I pressed the play button. Those slow motion shots of naked Roman men in the water did not disappoint. The film in its entirely functioned as the opposite of Tempest. Where the former dwelled in the dark pits of the English beaches, the latter suffered under the intense heat of the sun. Imagine Sebastian’s naked form, tied down to the sand, sweating. A martyr for not having gay sex despite his transparent desires. Oh! And the best friend Justin (“Justin”?!?! In Ancient Rome?!?!) who was obviously in love with him and could do nothing to help, forced to shoot an arrow through Sebastian’s midriff at the film’s climax. Ohh! My heart!

For me, the film was this ultimate showcase of queer desire and the sweet masochisms that come with such a hunger. I declared Jarman my favorite director, a second time. A man who gets me, who understands. I declared too soon. Next film!

I’m sorry to say that the plot of Jubilee, perhaps Jarman’s magnum opus, sounds amazing on paper. Guided by the spirit Ariel from The Tempest, Queen Elizabeth I time travels to an alternative post-apocalyptic 1970’s England, where leather punks rule the streets and capitalism somehow miraculously trudges on in the form of a dystopian MTV, so VH1. I was not watching these in order, at least not at first. Jubilee was shot by Jarman between Sebastiane and Tempest, so logic would have that I’d absolutely love this film. And yet…

In my experience, my viewing, I found Jubilee to be tiresome, overextending its stay and overdoing it with all the confusion and violence it sowed. But I’m still thinking about it, aren’t I? That’s the thing about good films, in my opinion. Not entertaining films, but good ones. They get under your skin, don’t they? And you still find yourself thinking about them weeks later. In a way I miss Jubilee the more I write about it right now. I can’t really tell you what happens in it. Some badass bitches kill a bunch of people and scream a lot. There’s a sweet, maybe incestuous?, gay couple who sleep with an artist. Some random scumbag who waters fake flowers in his plastic backyard garden. Queen Elizabeth I doesn’t even have much to do with the plot, maybe only making an appearance every thirty-or-so minutes to break the fourth wall. It’s all a fine example of how I loved the idea for one of Jarman’s films, but I found the execution lacking.

This would become a pattern in our relationship, me and Jarman. A biopic of the painter Michelangelo Caravaggio, delving into his homosexual tendencies. A metaphor for the crucifixion of Christ where the Messiah is replaced with a loving gay couple. The dramatic retelling of Benjamin Britton’s “War Requiem,” overlayed with the poet Wilfred Owen’s work. Time and time again, these films failed me. Here I sat, hoping to find my lost brother in time, and instead grew disenchanted on the couch—feeling guilt as I checked my phone more often than I’d like to admit.

I love Jarman though. Don’t think for a second that I do not. In a way I have come to know him through his work, perhaps in the manner of a deranged fan or scholar. Despite the difficulty I’ve encountered to connect with his later art, it has been a joy to watch him grow and evolve. He reuses actor friends over and over, some taking entire decades to pop up once more. Watching this band (this troupe?) of queers perform over the lifespan of an artist’s body of work both delights and enthralls me. I am haunted by their images. How many of these leather-clad souls are still with us today? How many of these Shakespearean fairies have been lost to AIDS? Renaissance barmen and models perished to other afflictions? World War I soldiers lost to time? I dig through IMdB as I watch these films, holding my breath as I wonder: “Did he make it?”

I would never have survived the 1980’s. This is something I know. I am just too careless. It’s a wonder I never caught Covid-19, and I pray to God I haven’t just jinxed myself by writing that. So I heavily admire these artists from the AIDS epidemic. I make dinner parties weird and drunkenly thank every gay over the age of fifty for “being here.” Because it is a miracle how we are all alive, how we are present to enjoy ourselves, when so much of our past was fraught with the threat of extinction. Faced with his impending demise, Jarman fought until the end. I believe he hit his stride in 1991 with the release of Edward II—based on Christopher Marlowe’s historical play. Much like The Tempest, it’s probable Jarman cut out the boring bits and sprinkled in his own. (I doubt the exclamation “Fuck!” was in the 1594 original.)

Edward II is a proper spiritual sequel to The Tempest, filmed in an abandoned industrial factory with harsh stage lighting against a murky black. People yell out to one another at conference tables. Diagetic crowd SFX takes the place of paid extras. Annie Lennox serenades two queers like it’s nothing. If only I had watched this after Sebastiane!

Alas.

I do not have much to say about Blue. It was sad, but not unbearable (unlike some of Jarman’s other art films like Last of England or The Garden). Almost entirely blind from the AIDS complications, the only thing Jarman could see in the final stretch of his life were shades of blue. The result of his last film: a single frame, #001da9, accompanied with a semi-train-of-thought soundscape for nearly eighty minutes. What greater tragedy than an artist who has lost sight? I sympathize, empathize, faced with the possibility of my own blindness deriving from diabetic complications if I don’t get my shit together. The viewing of Blue proved terrifying. Melancholy. Boring. Fiery. Where does the mind wander when confronted with the VHS loading screen?

“Would you feel faint if someone stuck a needle in your arm? I’ve gotten used to it. But I still shut my eyes.”

I love the anger of Blue. The righteous anger of the disabled, the regular visitors of the medical waiting room. I start out the film asking: “What was the point of any of this? Why make this, only to have it be appreciated by a small fraction of film nerds on obscure streaming channels?” But what was the point of me watching it? What was the point of watching Derek Jarman’s entire feature filmography? I went searching for my brother in time. Did I ever find him?

“Our name will be forgotten in time. No one will remember our work,” Derek says on a beach. Perhaps to his lover Keith, in front of that beach cottage from The Garden, Derek’s home. Prospect Cottage. Keith Collins kept it up until his recent death in 2018. It has since been purchased for preservation. A little blue house in the Dungeness landscape, battered by sea winds every day under a web of power station wires. Gardens surround. We cannot see them in the picture.

“Our life will pass like the traces of a cloud. Be scattered like mists that is chased by the rays of the sun. For our time is the passing of a shadow. And our lives will run like sparks through the stubble. I place a delphinium, Blue, upon your grave...”

And the Criterion Channel menu pops back up.